The song I hear drifts out of the speakers. I gravitate, sustained. It’s gloomy and beautiful. It’s 18 minutes long. It fades and builds. Fuzz delayed open-tuned guitars stream in keyboard drone, and ethereal vocals. The drums pulse distance. It sounds so Icelandic. So Reykjavik-ish.

I move to find the cd case and see who it is.

Yume Bitsu? The Golden Vessyl of Sound? K Records? 2002? Olympia?

It’s so Icelandic, the album doesn’t even have song titles.

Olympia and Portland are kind of like Reykjavik. I guess. In the winter. If you walk through a cloudy field during a 5:30 sunset while it’s raining.

I turn confused. Where is Yume Bitsu now?

Adam Forkner is currently doing White Rainbow.

Franz Prichard and Alex Bundy are making a record with guest, Bobby Birdman on one track. You can hear that track on the State Rights Records comp called Bro Zone.

Jason Anderson, a.k.a. Wolf Colonel, makes records and tours.

They are all still in the NW.

Yume Bitsu was co-founded in 1995 at a small liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon by Franz and Adam.

Forming out of a love of psychedelic music, the group developed its spaced out sound in early, cassette only releases recorded on an 8 track mini-studio. Eventually they evolved into a full band, with Jason Anderson on drums and Alex Bundy on keyboards, electronics, and sound shaping.

In 1998, they released their first CD, Giant Surface Music Falling to Earth Like Jewels From the Sky. Recorded on their 8 track and then transferred to computer for subsequent overdubbing, mixing and mastering, the album introduces the Yume Bitsu sound. The band floats somewhere in-between cohesive song structure and space drone, marked by Adam's minimal, ghostly harmonized vocals, delay filled guitars, and sheets of keyboard hum.

Fast forward 3 full length releases to 2002. The Golden Vessyl of Sound has familiar and signature drifting textures. A random spore sample on ”Song One” reveals a variety of lunar audio planes. There is fuzz-phase guitar, echoed trumpet, and moog-dripping, analog keyboard. It’s ambient, sequenced, and warm.

It does begin to bleed a bit hippie with the story the band wrote about "Dryystn" - a mythical city, mind expansion, and The Vessyl Collective.

See, Dryystn, that could be Icelandic. There wouldn’t be 2 y’s if it wasn’t Icelandic. The higher level of consciousness and mind expansion are ok because it’s Icelandic.

Trent - out.